Judith Hall presents a poem by Dorothea Tanning

EVENING

He told us, with the years, you will come
To love the world.
And we sat there with our souls in our laps,
And comforted them.

-- Dorothea Tanning

from The Antioch Review, Winter 2004, v. 62, no. 1
and A Table of Content (Graywolf, 2004)

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Notes by Judith Hall

1. A note should not be longer than a poem.

2. Tanning’s “o” sounds -- her “come,” “love,” “comforted” struck against the longer “told” and “souls” – counterpoint with sonic half-companions despair. Music, though, does not ease affect, and the poem persuades, at least this reader, by suspending resolution.

3. Modest assonance? Is assonance modest? Erotic?

4. A note should spur – inspire? – a reader to reenter the poem.